


Not Quite A Catastrophe

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: you're the one that's making me strong [14]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura's kids turn the adashi girls into kittens, And I will, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hunk's back on Earth living the dad life, Kid Fic, Kittens, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Parenthood, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), dadam if you will, klance are married but lowkey so I'm not tagging them, someone give them a break, they didn't mean to though, tired dads with mischievous babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 14:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19747435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: "Go to Altea, they said," muttered Adam, bolting down the hallway with Sonia perched precariously on his shoulder. "It'll be fun, they said. All of my kids have been turned intocats,and now two of them are missing.""Have you looked in the engine room?""Start from the absolute worst place for kittens to be and work backwards," said Shiro drily. "We'll get them soon enough."---When the Adashi girls get turned into kittens, there's just one thing on their minds.Chaos.





	Not Quite A Catastrophe

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Alx_GG for giving me this idea and to Mr_Larry, Espy_Ninja, and everyone on twitter for listening to me scream about it for so long!
> 
> Kids' ages, for reference:
> 
> Adashi kids: Sonia (9, almost 10), Himeko (6), Amla and Yasuko (2)  
> Allura x Mystery Husband kids: Alcara (8), Alcor (6)

“Now, what are the rules again?” 

“Don’t ever, ever let the twins out of sight,” Sonia recited, leaning back so that Adam could comb out the knots near her scalp. “And never unbutton the harnesses. Me and Hime-chan have to stay with the babies unless we’re with you or tou-chan.”

“Good, my  _ janu _ . Himeko?”

“Keep an eye on ‘em even when the leashes are on,” said Himeko, speaking through a mouthful of doughnut from the galley downstairs. “And we  _ all  _ have to stay with Alcara unless we find Uncle Keith or Lancey. Or Aunty ‘Lura.”

“Amla?”

“Teddy,” offered the two-year-old, holding up the long-suffering Sir Corduroy. The bear was a beloved relic from Adam’s childhood, and ended up being passed down to Sonia for her first birthday after lying untouched in a trunk for nearly twenty years. Sonia had then given him to Himeko on  _ her  _ first birthday, and now Sir Corduroy spent most of his time with the chaos-loving twins. They had insisted on taking him along on the trip to New Altea, and ever since the journey began Adam and Shiro had both been having nightmares about what Yasuko might do if Sir Corduroy happened to get lost on the way. 

“No, baby,” said Shiro gently, taking the bear from Amla’s arms and tying it to the soft harness on her back. “Not teddy. Papa told us the rules for exploring the ship, right? Do you remember what they are?”

“Run ‘way,” Yasuko piped up. “Fast.”

“No,  _ don’t  _ run away,” Adam groaned, putting his head in his hands. “Takashi, this isn’t a good idea. The  _ Melenor’s  _ almost half as big as the Atlas, and they’ll be alone with Allura’s kids most of the time, so if anything happens...”

“I think the twins should stay with us, actually,” mused Shiro. “Would―oh, no. No, Amla, you  _ know  _ I can’t think straight when you give me those eyes! Stop it! Papa’s right, it’s far too dangerous for you two.”

“Pease?” Amla begged, tugging at the hem of Shiro’s nightshirt. “Pease, tou-chan?”

“We be good,” wailed Yasuko, who had dropped her knitted Bi-Boh-Bi and started to cry. “P’omise.”

“ _ Janaana,  _ I can’t let you go if you don’t promise to stay with your  _ didi  _ and onee-chan. The  _ Melenor _ isn’t home, you could get hurt if you ran away.” Adam kissed the tips of Yasuko’s fingers and sighed, pointing to the tiny mark on the side of her little thumb. “Remember when you touched the poison ivy after tou-chan told you not to? You could get hurt worse than that, there are heavy swinging doors and―”

Adam pulled the twins to his chest, looking fearfully up at Shiro as the blood drained out of his face. “Takashi, the  _ airlocks.  _ No, they’re staying right here.”

“Only Mama can open the airlocks,” came a little voice from the door, followed by Allura’s eight-year-old daughter and something that looked like a yellow hedgehog dressed in a tiny baker’s outfit. “They need her quintessence to work, so I can’t open them either.”

“Well, that’s a relief, I guess.” Adam frowned. “Um...Cara, honey, where did you get the hedgehog?”

“It isn’t a hedgehog,” said Alcara patiently, picking the poor creature up and tucking him into her bird’s nest of silver curls. “Not really. It’s Platt.”

“ _ Platt? _ ” Shiro repeated. “But Platt’s not a―”

“Mama started teaching me alchemical transmutations this year,” she chirped. “We just got to living things two months ago. I turned a frog into a shrew last week, so I decided to practice my mammal transmutations on the mice.”

“Why’s he wearing a chef hat?” wondered Himeko, touching Platt’s tiny nose and giggling when he reached out and poked her cheeks. “It’s so puffy.”

“Uncle Hunk made it for Cor’s birthday.”

“Where is your brother, anyway?” wondered Adam, poking his head out the door and looking down the hallway. “I haven’t seen him since―”

A crash sounded in the distance, followed by a high-pitched scream from Coran and the thud of running feet across the floor above them. Adam put his face in his hands, muttering under his breath in Urdu as Shiro tied Platt to Cara’s hair with a ribbon. 

“And  _ there’s  _ Cor,” sighed Sonia. “Back at it again.”

“Bye, Uncle Adam!” Cara shrieked, bundling Amla into her arms and booking it out of the room. “We’ll see you at lunch with Uncle Keith! Sonia, Himeko, come on!”

“The harness clips!” cried Shiro, throwing them to Sonia as she and Himeko took off after Cara. “Don’t forget to put them on, okay?”

“We won’t!” And with that the children were gone, thundering away amid gales of laughter to the eastern side of the ship and, Adam hoped, the nursery. His heart began to ache the second they disappeared around the corner, filling his mind with images of treacherously high staircases and accidents and broken airlock doors and colorful Altean sweets that might be toxic to human toddlers with no sense of self-preservation―

“Relax, love,” Shiro murmured, brushing a hand through Adam’s hair. “They’ll be just fine. Sonia’s been aboard the Melenor before, and Allura’s kids have lived here for most of their lives. Everything’s been childproofed since Cara was born, right down to the vials in the research wing. They’ll come back tired and sleepy and hungry, just like they always do, and then spend the rest of the day asking you to carry them.”

“I  _ know _ that, moonlight, but I can’t help worrying. It’s a new place and they’re going to want to explore. Heaven knows the twins get into enough trouble when they’re right under our noses at home, so...”

“They’ll behave, I promise. They’ll be on the harnesses the whole time, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Famous last words, Takashi.” Adam buried his face in Shiro’s shoulder, smiling as he felt his husband’s laughter rumbling against his cheek. “Famous last words.”

* * *

The Melenor was a homey ship, with bright yellow walls and soft couches and plenty of warm nooks to nap in. Structurally, it was a smaller replica of the Castle of Lions, but Allura had designed the living areas to resemble Keith’s California farmhouse as much as possible. She had fallen in love with the place on her first round of visits after the war, and later decided to equip both the Melenor and her palace on New Altea with the most comfortable Earthen furnishings she could find. Sonia liked it well enough, she supposed―there was an enormous library and a huge bedroom perfect for slumber parties, and a lab where she could watch her Aunty Pidge’s experiments, and a wonderful cook in the galley who made okonomiyaki and vegetable curry almost as well as her _tou-chan_ did, but…

“I’m bored,” she complained, slumping back onto a pillow with Yasuko in her lap. “Cara, we’ve played this game already. Can’t we do something else?”

“Me and the babies can’t play it anyway,” sighed Himeko. “The tiles only light up when you touch them, see?” She poked at one of the scaultrite squares and pouted as it stayed a dull dark blue, rather than illuminating silver like it did for Sonia and Cara. 

“What do you want to do then, Hime-chan?” asked Alcor, punctuating the question with a gap-toothed smile almost as lovely as his mother’s. Himeko’s cheeks went pink at the sight; the little girl was very much aware that she had what Aunty Pidge called a  _ crush,  _ but she was also perfectly content to carry the sweet little secret without telling a single soul. After all, her tou-chan had said she was too young to like boys or get married, and Himeko’s tou-chan knew  _ everything.  _ But  _ Sonia  _ thought that crushes were nice to have, so…

“What do you like to do for fun when we’re not here?” she asked, heart beating fast as Alcor put his chin in his small brown hands and scooted closer to her. “Let’s do that.”

“I like watching Cara doing alchemy, when I’m allowed. Do you wanna see?”

“You still have to turn Platt back, so we might as well,” Sonia pointed out, frowning at the hedgehog as it climbed onto Cara’s shoulder. “He doesn’t look very happy.”

“Isn’t that what hedgehogs always look like?” 

“He looks like someone sat on him, and now he’s mad,” giggled Cor. “Maybe Sonia’s right.”

“Let’s ask him. I bet he wants to stay a hedgehog, though.”

“Well?” demanded Sonia, a few seconds later. “What did he say?”

“...He said he wants to go back to normal,” said Alcara, wilting like a dried-up flower. “I guess I’d better turn him into a mouse again.”

“Are the twins still on their leashes?” A brief investigation proved that the twins were indeed still harnessed to their older sisters, and with that all six children set off for Allura’s alchemy chamber with Cara in the lead. Alcor took Himeko’s hand on the way, clutching her little palm tightly in his until Amla and Yasuko ordered him to let go.

“Why?” he asked, bemused. “Hime-chan doesn’t mind.”

“ _ My  _ hand,” Amla told him, and grabbed it for herself. “Mine. Go ‘way.”

“You can hold my hand on the way back,” Himeko promised. “Can Cor hold it now?”

“ _ No _ ,” said Yasuko, snatching the other one. “Can’t.”

“But Yasu-chan, he―”

“This is it,” Cara interrupted, stopping at a pair of high double doors with glass knobs. “Let’s go in.”

As far as magic chambers went, the Melenor’s was somewhat drab compared to the few that Sonia and Himeko had seen on New Altea―it was windowless and bare, without a single hint of decoration or furniture. A plain white circular plinth stood in the center of the room, raised about four inches off the ground and just large enough for two or three people to stand on; this was where Alcara had her alchemy lessons, aided by her mother and the pyramid of Balmeran crystal set into the ceiling. 

“Do you just put him on the platform?” wondered Himeko, watching as Alcara squinted up at the massive gemstone. “Or do you have to stand there?”

“I stand there for non-transmutation things, but when I’m transforming something I have to put it right under the point of the crystal. Platt, do you know where to go?”

Platt squeaked and trundled to the painted ring right in the middle of the plinth. He looked slightly more energetic now that his trials were nearly over, and as the crystal lit up he relaxed and made a soft chuffing noise in Cara’s direction. 

“What, really? You wouldn’t rather just be yourself again?”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wants me to turn him into a cat,” sighed Cara. “Chuchule stole all his treats last week, and now Platt wants to scare him.”

Another squeak. “Yes, yes, Chulatt too. Now stay still, okay? Otherwise you’ll end up with a hedgehog face and a cat body, and even Chuchule wouldn’t get scared by  _ that. _ ”

Much later, Sonia and Himeko would look back on that moment and realize that while  _ they  _ were eager to watch Alcara at work, the twins were only a month past their second birthday and didn’t have the slightest idea what the beam of light plunging towards the dais might do. They also ought to have remembered that the twins had received a heavy dose of Altean quintessence from Adam before they were born, and were therefore about four times stronger than they looked―but Sonia was only nine, and Himeko only six, and so when Amla began to wail neither of them understood why. 

“Baby?” worried Alcor. “What’s wr―”

“ _ Pat! _ ” she screamed, hurtling forward as fast as she could with her little hands balled into fists. Himeko shrieked as the harness went taut, and tried to keep her footing, but Amla made up for her tiny body with sheer determination and dragged Himeko all the way to the plinth before climbing onto it and launching herself at Platt. “Don’ worry, I save you!”

_ “No,  _ Amla! _ ”  _ roared Sonia, leaping up behind her and falling flat on her stomach as she tripped over Himeko’s legs. “Pull it back, she’ll get hit!” 

“Cara!” howled Cor. “Cara, stop it!”

“I can’t,” cried the princess. “It’s the crystal now, not me! Sonia, come back, you’ll―”

The beam of quintessence came down like a flood of blinding sunshine, throwing Alcor and Cara almost halfway across the room before striking the plinth in a shower of blue and silver. Cor threw his hands across Cara’s eyes and screamed at the top of his lungs, sobbing into his sister’s jacket as Himeko’s cries were drowned out by Sonia’s and the twins’―and then disappeared completely, so that all he could hear was the thrumming of the ship’s engines and Platt’s terrified squeaks echoing off the walls. 

Once the gleam of the crystal died away, Cor finally dared to raise his head and look around the room. Platt was sprawled on his back next to the plinth, still very much a hedgehog, while all four of their friends seemed to have vanished―at least until he caught sight of Cara’s abandoned cloak on the dais, blanketed over a few tiny lumps scarcely bigger than his hand. 

“Oh,” he gasped, crumpling back into Cara’s arms with a groan. “Oh,  _ no. _ ”  



End file.
